NEW YORK (AP) — The dollar fell Friday, pushing lower initially on news from Iran that it plans to pull its foreign exchange reserves from European banks, but extending the move late in the day amid rising oil prices and a sharp drop in US stocks.
Still most analysts said that the dollar remains confined in the middle of a tight range trade. Trading has been choppy, and many speculative investors are getting frustrated waiting for the dollar to break the ranges.
The situation has been typified by the tight confines in which the euro has traded roughly between .20 and .22 since the beginning of January. On Friday, traders made attempts at both sides of that range, with the euro trading as low as .2140 overnight, and as high as .2141 late in the session, according to EBS.
In late New York trading, the euro was at .2137, up from .2097 late Thursday. The dollar was at 1.2760 Swiss francs from 1.2840 and at 115.26 yen, down from Y115.43. The pound climbed to .7710 from .7585. The dollar was at 115.26 yen, down from Y115.43, and the euro was at Y139.92 from Y139.63.
The dollar’s push lower in the New York afternoon was triggered by a rout in U.S. stocks and surge in oil prices. In late trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 210 points, single-handedly wiping out the gains it had etched since the beginning of 2006. The frontmonth crude oil contract, meanwhile, pushed back above a barrel, nearing a record high and renewing fears about an economic fallout.
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